“The Great Gatsby” might have turned out a lot differently if American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald — a Princeton graduate — had attended the Ivy League school today.

He might have been influenced by the new politically correct language guidelines that instruct all Princeton employees to avoid using any “gendered” language, including the word “man.”

“Somehow you expect Princeton not to fall for this sort of thing — it seems they should be above this nonsense,” said one father who is looking at colleges for his son.

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So this fragment from Fitzgerald’s “Gatsby” — “the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men” — might have ended with the stilted and decidedly un-poetic “elations of people.”

Princeton is trying to erase the use of any gendered terms by imposing a strict new set of “gender-inclusive style guidelines,” all in the name of appealing to a tiny minority of people. The college’s human resource department produced the guide and expects school staff to adhere to it. The policy has been in place since March 2015 but was first made public on Thursday by The College Fix.

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When contacted, Princeton spokesman John Cramer told The Fix the guidelines “reflect the university’s initiative of fostering an inclusive environment.”

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The heavy-handed and confusing guide tells employees, “Replace gendered pronouns, e.g., he, him, his, and she, her, hers, by rewriting the text in the plural.” The guide also directs staff to “use gender-neutral occupational titles and gender-neutral generic terms instead of … expressions that contain the word ‘man’ and the use of ‘man’ as an adjective or verb.”

So that means the widely used term “freshman” — used on virtually every college campus in America right now — may never be uttered on this ivy-drenched campus. Instead, only “frosh” and “first-year students” are deemed acceptable.

Princeton employees cannot say, “Man the front desk.” They must now say, “Staff the front desk.”

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“Somehow you expect a university like Princeton not to fall for this sort of thing — it seems as if they should be above this nonsense somehow,” said one Boston-area dad of a high school senior currently looking at colleges. “It would definitely influence whether we would even consider a college that has these types of rules that cater to a minority — you question their basic good sense and use of funds,” said this father.

All forms of alumni, alumna, alumnae, and alumnus are also now nixed — instead, one must use alum, grad, alums, or grads.

Also — workers at the school cannot now say, “Man the front desk.” They must say instead, “Staff the front desk,” as CentralJersey.com reported.

In its over-the-top political correctness, Princeton now joins such higher-learning institutions as The University of Tennessee, which urges incoming students and teachers to lose references to “he,” “she,” and “them,” in favor of the gender-neutral “ze” and “xe.”

The cost of attending Princeton, by the way, is almost $60,000 a year with room and board.